A wide range of traditional information retrieval is being offered to users by service providers or search engines. The traditional information retrieval services offered may allow a user to provide a set of keywords or terms to a search engine. In return, the search engine provides a list of items that are relevant to the keywords or the terms by retrieving text documents.
A problem that occurs with the traditional information retrieval, however, is when the user wants to find particular locations by representative categories in a geographical region. For example, the user travelling in a new city may have limited knowledge about the area. Since the user may also have limited time, it is highly desirable to find locations with a desired mixture of local sights and/or attractions to visit during this limited time.
Another problem with the traditional information retrieval is that it does not help identify geographical regions that may be considered potential high-risk areas prone to outbreak of diseases. Thus, the problem is not able to identify the high-risk areas to alert a traveler to avoid that geographical region.